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Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great
matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man\'s reasonable
perception into feeling. In our age the common religious perception of men
is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man-we know that the well-being
of man lies in the union with his fellow men. True science should indicate
the various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should
transform this perception into feeling.

CXL



Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press

My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;

Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express

The manner of my pity-wanting pain.

If I might teach thee wit, better it were,

Though not to love, yet, love to tell me so;--

As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,

No news but health from their physicians know;--

For, if I should despair, I should grow mad,

And in my madness might speak ill of thee;

Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,

Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.

  That I may not be so, nor thou belied,

  Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.

 	--William Shakespeare

LXX



That thou art blam\'d shall not be thy defect,

For slander\'s mark was ever yet the fair;

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven\'s sweetest air.

So thou be good, slander doth but approve

Thy worth the greater being woo\'d of time;

For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,

And thou present\'st a pure unstained prime.

Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days

Either not assail\'d, or victor being charg\'d;

Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,

To tie up envy, evermore enlarg\'d,

  If some suspect of ill mask\'d not thy show,

  Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

 	--William Shakespeare

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty. -Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into The
Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757